Is Everyone Hanging Out Without Me? (And Other Concerns) (18 page)

I just don’t understand any of that at all. Here’s why:

In my mind, the sexiest thing in the world is the feeling that you’re wanted. The slightly nervous asking of your phone number. The text message asking you to dinner. The simple overture of wanting me can satisfy my ego for a good long time. The sexual situation that could come of it? Well, that’s just less appealing to me. I don’t mean to say I don’t enjoy sex; I’m a properly functioning mammal and everything. I just think, like, who is this guy? Don’t you need to know some more about a guy than an evening’s worth of conversation at a bar to make sex appealing?

Also: fear is a pretty big turn-off. I’m talking about safety here. I don’t even mean sexual health safety, like STDs. I mean good old-fashioned life-and-death safety. Here’s what I can’t wrap my brain around. I barely talk to strangers (a habit that I started as a child and that has served me well through my adulthood). So the idea of going to a stranger’s house at night, or having that stranger over to my house, sounds insanely dangerous. These fears have made it so that when my female friends talk to me about one-night stands, I’m an incredibly irritating listener.

EXCITED SEXUALLY LIBERATED FRIEND:
So, then it was like 2 a.m. that same night, and he knocked on my apartment door. I was in my robe and nothing else—

ME:
No underwear?

EXCITED SEXUALLY LIBERATED FRIEND:
No. I said “nothing else.”

ME
(skeptical): I feel like you were wearing underwear. That’s how you are in, like, repose?

EXCITED SEXUALLY LIBERATED FRIEND:
Yes.

ME:
You really like not wearing underwear? Am I the only one who finds that totally uncomfortable? (lowered voice) Don’t you ever sometimes … excrete?

EXCITED SEXUALLY LIBERATED FRIEND:
Gross. Stop it.

ME:
Okay. But let’s remember to come back to this no-underwear conversation later.

EXCITED SEXUALLY LIBERATED FRIEND:
So he knocked at the door—

ME:
Wait! Sorry. I’m just realizing, your doorman let him up without ever seeing him before? Doesn’t that disturb you, that your doorman would just let any old person off the street up to your apartment? I would give my doorman a book of photos of accepted guests that he could reference, like a reference book—

EXCITED SEXUALLY LIBERATED FRIEND:
I’m doing fine with my doorman.

ME:
I would have established a different procedure.

EXCITED SEXUALLY LIBERATED FRIEND:
Great, Mindy. Anyway, then I showed him around the place—

ME:
The doorman? (off ESL Friend’s annoyed look) The guy! The guy! Yes.

EXCITED SEXUALLY LIBERATED FRIEND:
He was into the way I decorated it. Really taking it in.

ME:
He was casing the joint!

EXCITED SEXUALLY LIBERATED FRIEND:
No! He was not casing the joint! He was being sexy and sweet and making cute little jokes about family photos. And then he asked if he could see my bedroom—

ME:
Your bedroom, so he could rape and murder you!

Eventually, my constant interruptions make her so irritated, she stops telling her sexy story. I guess nothing puts a damper on a one-night stand as much as your friend pointing out all the opportunities where you might have been killed.

Don’t get me wrong, I love hearing about it. I don’t want to come off as prim or that I won’t go see a R-rated movie or something. In fact, I would feel sad if I didn’t have my Sexually Liberated Friend there to tell me fun, frank tales of desires fulfilled.

I just don’t think I could ever do it myself.

So, this is what I’m like: if you come over to my house, I need to know your first and last name. I need to have your phone number and a person whom we both know so you can’t disappear forever in case you murder me. Ultimately, it comes down to this: How embarrassing would it be for me to be talking to a detective at a precinct after you tried to rape and murder me in my home, and not be able to tell him your name or any information about you because we were having a one-night stand? I’ve seen
Law & Order: SVU.
I know how it works.

“Hooking Up” Is Confusing

T
HE CAREFUL
reader will note that my teens and early twenties were largely without significant sexual incident. Okay, even the not-so-careful reader will notice this. All right. If you’ve merely glanced at the back cover of this book while you’re in line at the bookstore, you’d probably come to that conclusion. This is what happens when you have friends who are more likely to tell ghost stories in a living room with flashlights than recount tales of raunchy sex encounters.

Because of this, I have fallen way behind in my terminology. I am especially tired of not knowing exactly what “hooking up” means. Some version of this happens to me constantly:

PSYCHED PAL:
Oh, hey! I hooked up with Nikki last night.

ME:
That’s awesome! You’ve liked her for a while. Nice job.

(We high-five. A pause.)

ME:
What does that mean? Did you have sex?

PSYCHED PAL:
You’re disgusting.

It’s not that I’m some pervert looking for lurid details (this time, anyway). It’s just that I have no idea what you are talking about. There have been times when friends have said they hooked up with someone and all it means is that they had a highly anticipated kissing session. Other times it’s a full-on all-night sex-a-thon.
*
Can’t we have a universal understanding of the term, once and for all? From now on, let’s all agree that hooking up = sex. Everything else is “made out.” And if you’re older than twenty-eight, then just kissing someone doesn’t count for crap and is not even worth mentioning. Unless you’re Mormon, in which case you’re going to hell. There, I think we’re all on the same page. If Europe could figure out a way to do the euro, I feel confident we can do this.

*
Full-on All-Night Sex-a-thon
is also the name of my debut hip-hop album.

I Love Irish Exits

I
RECENTLY LEARNED
that an “Irish exit” is when you leave a party without telling anyone (and presumably it is because you are too drunk to form words). A “French exit” is when you leave a party early without saying good-bye to anyone or paying your share of the bill and maybe you are also drunk. Um, I may have found these on kind of a xenophobic website. Makes me wonder about Jewish exits or Black exits. Okay, thin ice. Too far.

I think Irish exits should actually be de rigueur, except the drunk part. Slipping away is basically all I do now at large parties. My version of an Irish exit has an air of deception to it, because it includes my asking loudly, “Where’s the bathroom?” and making theatrical looking-around gestures like a lost foreign tourist. But then, instead of finding the bathroom, I sneakily grab my coat and leave. Other times I say, “Oh, I think I left my lights on in my car!” or “Oh my gosh, I think I left my car unlocked.” Cars make great pretexts for Irish exits. People never doubt weird issues you have with your car, because it’s extremely boring to listen to.

The reason I pull Irish exits is not because I think I’m too busy and cool to be bothered with pleasantries. It’s that when there is a gathering of more than thirty people I don’t want to waste your time with hellos and good-byes. I think it’s actually the more polite thing to do, because I’m not coercing partygoers into some big farewell moment with me. Then other people feel like they have to stop what they’re doing and hug me, too. It’s time-wasting dominoes.

Irish exits are supposed to be subtle, a way to leave without creating a disruption, and yes, on occasion, a way to perhaps escape notice for epic drunkenness. The only snag is you have to be comfortable lying directly to the faces of people you like. There has really been only one time when someone actually busted me on it. It occurred at my friend Louisa’s birthday, on the roof of the Downtown Standard Hotel in L.A. when I was twenty-seven. I was having a crummy time because I was supposed to go with my friend Diana but she couldn’t make it at the last minute because she was going to Burning Man.
*
Diana was going to be my wingwoman because I knew my ex-boyfriend was coming to the party with his new girlfriend, Chloe.

A word about Chloe: Chloe was so young (or young-looking) she’d actually played the daughter of an actress four years older than me on a TV show. But the worst thing about Chloe is that she was sweet.

Chloe approached me.

CHLOE
(shyly): Can I just say you’re my hero? I took the Long Island Rail Road out to see
Matt & Ben
when I was in middle school.

Don’t you dare, Chloe. Don’t you dare make it impossible to hate you. Quit looking at me, all earnest, with those Bambi eyes. Also, I’m your “hero”? What am I, ten thousand years old? I quickly said something weird like “Bless you, child,” excused myself, and walked briskly away. I went over to Louisa, who was standing with my friend Pete when I began to initiate an Irish exit.

ME:
Oh man, you know what? I think I left my glove compartment open when I parked here. I’d better go check on it.

PETE:
Just say you’re leaving. We know you’re not coming back.

Pete read my mind. At that moment, I was actually thinking about which twenty-four-hour taco stand on the drive back home would conceivably accept credit cards.

A word about Pete: Pete is a very funny, direct, mildly pessimistic guy who’s a great friend because it’s like Larry David is your pal. He’s also one of those guys whose plainspokenness is charming when used on other people, but super irritating when used on you.

ME:
I’m not leaving. Just need to check my car and maybe use the bathroom. Just drinking so much water these days. Health. Ha ha.

I mimed drinking a long gulp of water to sell the point.

PETE:
Why must you always tell us why you’re going to the bathroom?

Pete had a point. No one has ever been curious about what people do when they go to the bathroom. It was a sure sign of guilt: giving too much information about my cover story was such an amateur move.

Ugh! That stupid Chloe threw me off, with her hot youngness and surprising sweetness. Why not just be a total bitch to me like I would’ve been if I had been the hot and young one? Damn it, Chloe!

Then I got an idea.

ME:
So am I trying to sneak out or am I using the bathroom, Pete? Get your idea of my motivations straight before you accuse me of something.

I looked around to see if anyone else had noticed my
Rainmaker
-level-closing-arguments rebuttal. Nope.

PETE
(not budging): You’re obviously leaving.

ME:
Well, would someone who is sneaking out leave their coat here?

I slowly took off my jacket and, with a flourish, hurled it on a sofa. I looked at Pete triumphantly as I marched out of the room. I was still marching triumphantly as I walked down the hall, past the women’s bathroom, into the elevator, across the lobby of the Standard to the street, where I got into my car and drove off.

The jacket was from Forever 21. Sorry, Pete, you don’t know the freedom of the seventeen-dollar coat when caught at a party with an ex-boyfriend and his new hot girlfriend. And that, my friends, is how to execute an Irish exit. Thank you, Forever 21!

*
I feel like I’m constantly being ditched for the Burning Man Festival. The Burning Man Festival is an annual festival that is an “experiment in human expression.” Only something reprehensible would be so vague. There are only a few things that I’ve never actually done that I can say I categorically hate. One is Burning Man. The others are sky-diving, ménage à trois, and when parents tell stories about their babies and incorporate impressions of their babies’ voices. I love hearing about your kid! Just use your normal voice!

Guys Need to Do Almost Nothing to Be Great

F
ORGIVE ME
, but being a guy is so easy. A little Kiehl’s, a little Bumble and Bumble, a peacoat, and Chuck Taylors, and you’re hot.

Here’s my incredibly presumptuous guide to being an awesome guy, inside and out. Mostly out, for who am I to instruct you on inner improvement? Let me say here that if you’re some kind of iconoclastic dude who goes by the beat of your own drum, you will find this insufferable. I totally understand this. But why are you even reading this book at all? Shouldn’t you be hiking the Appalachian Trail right now or something?

1. Buy a well-fitting peacoat from J.Crew.

Or wait until Christmas sales are raging and buy a designer one, like John Varvatos or something. Black looks good on everyone (Obvious Cops) and matches everything (Duh Police), but charcoal gray is good, too. You can always look like a put-together Obama speechwriter with a classy peacoat. Oh, and get it cleaned once a year. Sounds prissy, but a good cleaning can return a peacoat to its true-black luster, and make you look as snappy as you did on the first day you wore it.

2. Have a signature drink like James Bond.

It’s silly, but I’m always so impressed if a guy has a cool go-to drink. Obviously, if it has a ton of fancy ingredients, like puréed berries or whatever, you can look a little bit like a high-maintenance weirdo, so don’t do that. If you like Scotch, have a favorite brand. It makes you look all self-actualized and grown-up. (You don’t have to say your drink order with the theatrical panache of James Bond. That’s for close-ups.)